We have not yet got to the moment on which the whole future will hang. When we do, I fancy that this competitive soul of ours may want too much to have things both ways. Whatever the terms of the peace that comes, that peace will not last without a League of Nations to guarantee it; and such a League we cannot have unless impartiality be its backbone; unless we mean that it shall judge justly, and enforce judgment without fear or favour; unless we are willing to accept its judgments in all matters, and not merely when it suits us. A man does not guarantee the health of his body just by holding his neighbour down; and the true path to security and a great future lies in the efforts we make to improve ourselves, rather than in those we make to injure others. The freedom and fair opportunity which are vital to a lasting peace need not bar us from national preparedness, from intelligent effort to save ourselves and our Allies from unfair commercial competition, need not prevent us from assuring our safety and improving our corporate life. But they do mean that we must keep free of a militarist and tyrannical spirit. How far will our competitive British soul, when peace comes, be proof against that virus? Are we, in the winning of military victory, going quietly to accept moral defeat, letting our ideals turn turtle and float with their keels to the stars? I wonder. This League for Peace we talk of—that even statesmen talk of—will not be born of violent minds, but out of level and long-headedness, and the desire to benefit not only our own country, but the world. It is an undertaking fraught with the most poignant difficulty. If you imagine it fledged from birth, with wings full grown—if you imagine a world disarmed, immediately responsive to law—it is but an Utopian dream. The world will assuredly remain armed; at a single stride one cannot step from hell to heaven. But armedness need not prevent the nations from establishing procedure for the delay of warlike action—a tribunal to which all disputes must be referred; need not prevent them from pledging themselves to forcible support of its decisions, from declaring commerce _sacro-sanct_ between members of the League, and punishing by blockade and ostracism any nation that betrays its membership, or flouts a decision, so that the sanctity of a nation’s commerce may in future depend on that nation’s loyalty to other nations; nor need it prevent States from taking the manufacture of war material out of private hands. Only on the proved efficacy of such measures as these will the disarmament of nations follow, slowly, surely, equally; for man will then be acting, as he loves to act, not by rote and theory, but on the evidence of facts.